System Photos!

Yes, I’m just a lime guy with gin… I will try it the next time without the lime. Hendricks is my favorite gin and Bombay Sapphire is my 2nd choice… I like them all; however, those two do it for me… I have to be honest, stevensegal sure does know how to live.

Those are my go-tos as well.

I also recently enjoyed a bottle of Anchor Distilling Junipero. And the sacrilege of a barrel gin my brother in law gave me. It’s almost bourbon colored but the name escapes me.

Cheers!!

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The interesting one is Chapel Down. I had some of their gin and were down in Rye at Christmas, and popped up to their vineyards, only 8 miles away in Tenderden. We bought lots of wines, cider, gin and vodka. My family were tasting, pissed before 11 in the morning. A couple of weeks ago we went to a show at Kings Place, a great venue in Kings Cross, London, and literally opposite, 30 yards away, Chapel Down have a stunning new gin bar, restaurant and brewery. Things are looking up. They are going places.

A slightly longer walk from Sadler’s Wells, our venue of choice, is a fabulous gin store, in Exmouth Market, purveyors of the fruity and herby Sly Gins. The thing is, you can have a rubbish audio system, but you can’t go far wrong with a GnT, and it tends to make the audio system sound better.

The space to fuel my drinking habit was facilitated by getting rid of my component system. So it wasn’t just because I liked Devialet’s compactness.

Anyway, I’m going to see Katya Kabanova tonight, and it’s had amazing reviews, so I’d better sober up.

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Thanks for sharing - need to give this a whirl… yeah, saw the Sly Gin bottle… like I said stevensegal knows how to live…

I found Bombay Sapphire was a popular gin in some nice places in India and Sri Lanka. In particular at Tea Trails, tea all day and gin all evening. Another one was Devi Garh near Udaipur, nice cool evenings and a fabulous view.
http://www.exquisitetravelcollection.com/ceylon-tea-trails.php
Have an almost empty bottle lurking, and some Hendricks.

As with umiami91 I like Hendricks, then Bombay Sapphire… however, good to switch it up and try something different… thanks.

The history of English winemaking is a sad and desperate business. However, thanks to global warming, which of course doesn’t exist, things are improving. Southern England is much better suited to apples, as is north western France (Normandy mostly), so you get cider and Calvados. Chapel Down have just built a big apple factory and they make a lovely light cider that works as a mixer for their vodka, which is made from Chardonnay grapes. I gave a friend one and he drank half the bottle.

What has this got to do with audio? Not a lot.

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I was trying to remember where I’d seen those speakers before, and then I remembered.

They are quite wonderful.

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Ha! Nice!

Feeling thirsty?

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you guys make me feel such a pariah as all I get here is a mere Beefeater or Tanqueray!

If you go to the Don Papa Rum, there’s a Japanese malt behind that and a bottle of Tanqueray behind that (the red seal on the green bottle, for the uninitiated). The ladies’ drinks - Pimms, Baileys, etc - are at the back. Remember, we’re still talking audio and have to maintain standards.

Besides the ESL57 tea ceremony system, am I the only person with a dual purpose audio/AV system?

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Great to see so many fabulous setups! Here’s mine, a very humble setup in a compromised listening space, in the living room that opens to dining area to the left.

Thanks to @Paul suggestion, I added the subwoofer last year (2 RCA) from the DAC and I’m enjoying the fuller, room filling bass. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:


PerfectWave Transport
DirectStream DAC
First Watt J2 (thinking to swap to M700s)
Focus Audio FS8 SE (91dB, 4 ohms)
Earthquake 600W 10” subwoofer

Right now I have to manually swap speaker cables when I watch TV / movies running from the Denon multichannel. So I’ve been thinking to get a lot of speakers just for 2-channel. Originally thinking to go bookshelf, but most of them are quite large if I were to place them on the TV cabinet / rack. Feel free to suggest!

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Almost forgot.

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Did you go to South Africa to get one of those ebony elephants to match the speakers? It’s a very large elephant or very small speakers.

Do you find switching from pure wool to a viscose mix impacts on the sound quality? The theory goes that mental function for listening to music (the brain consumes 25% of our energy) is such that reduced heat loss slows our heart rate, makes us more relaxed and both dynamics and soundstage improve. Put your feet in an ice bath and you’ll spot the difference immediately.

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My wife got him here in the US from an African guy who was selling them at a farmers market. The speaker he is on is a ProAc Tablette 10 which is indeed small. But since you mentioned South Africa, here are a couple of his friends which came from a trip to Swaziland a couple of years ago (now renamed Eswatini).

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Just to wrap up the gin topic, in my opinion one of the most important tweaks is 2" ice cubes. They melt very slowly. I put in the gin, then the ice cubes, let it chill for a minute, then add the tonic carefully away from the ice cubes (else it de-fizzes), add lime etc. and stir.

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However colourful, I’m not sure a water buffalo or a hippopotamus have any relevance to this discussion. It is quite species-specific. Maybe needs a new thread.

True. Apologies for going off-topic.